Survey on Ear Acupuncture Usage by Clinical Traditional Korean Medicine Doctors

In this issue of the journal, recommended articles are selected from the Korean Journal of Acupuncture (ISSN: 1229-7933) published in Korean and from the Journal of Pharmacopuncture (ISSN: 1226-4849) published in English.

(1) Korean Journal of Acupuncture, Vol.28, No.4, pp.67∼77, 2011

Survey on Ear Acupuncture Usage by Clinical Traditional Korean Medicine Doctors

Ae-Ran Kim, Sang-Hun Lee, Jung-Eun Kim, Bo-Young Kim, Kyung-Won Kang, Sun-Mi Choi

Abstract

Objectives: A survey was conducted to determine ear acupuncture usage by clinical traditional Korean medicine doctor and to lay a foundation for standards for its clinical application.

Methods: Twice over two weeks, e-mail were sent to Korean medicine doctors whose email addresses were registered at the Association of Korea Oriental Medicine. Two hundred eighty(280) completed questionnaires were used for the analysis.

Results: Of the respondents, 66.07% answered in use, but the answer “less than 10 per 100 patient applied” was 54.29%. The major field of treatment were addictive disorders, such as smoking, and 80.11% of the patients had less than 3 days of treatment. The ear was the most commonly treated area with 66.67%. The self-removal frequency was as high as 65.05%. The rate of side effects was less than 10% (96.70% replies in total), and these side effects showed light symptoms such as “pain” (46.95%), itchiness (29.27%), and flaring (19.51%). The recommendations for improving ear acupuncture treatment was “the development of effective treatment manual” (28.57%) and “increasing insurance costs” (27.86%).

Conclusions: Based on the survey, a vast majority of the Traditional Korean medicine doctors used ear acupuncture, but the frequency of use was low. We hope this study can form the basis for developing of treatment manuals for various indications and safe treatment guidelines.

Key Words: clinical traditional Korean medicine doctor; ear acupuncture; intradermal acupuncture; Survey